


in my head the unsaid words

by susiecarter



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe
Genre: Communication Failure, Denial of Feelings, Fuckbuddies, M/M, Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6645499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They fuck like they hate each other. (They don't.)</p><p>Written as a fill for the dceu_kinkmeme <a href="http://dceu-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1491.html?thread=723#cmt723">prompt</a>, summarized: Bruce/Clark, first time they're tender with each other. (Full prompt in author's notes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in my head the unsaid words

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to the OP for the awesome prompt (and to the DCEU kinkmeme for existing in the first place, of course!), and for all the enthusiasm and encouragement while this was still a WIP. ♥
> 
> The original prompt, which I read like once and then just could not stop thinking about: "Even after Clark comes back from the dead and he and Bruce start working together, there's a lot of tension between them, and when they fuck, it's usually rough and angry. It takes them months, if not years, until they're actually tender and gentle with each other (can either be just one time, or a slow build-up of increasing gentleness). While still being emotionally constipated idiots who sure as hell aren't going to _talk_ about why they've started being nicer to each other."
> 
> All Justice League stuff in here is super vague, and based on New 52 + the movie lineup DC has planned, at least as best I understand it. (I _think_ Ezra Miller's Flash is Barry Allen, but am not 100% sure.) But don't let me mentioning that trick you into thinking there's a plot here, because there so isn't. This is 90% emotional pornography with the repression turned up to eleven and 10% actual banging, because that's how I roll. \o?
> 
> Oh, and the title's from the poem [Inside](http://www.memorious.org/?id=527), by Dan Albergotti.

 

 

They fuck like they hate each other.

 

 

They don't. They've known each other too long, fought side-by-side too often. Clark may not like Batman's methods, but he respects Bruce's ethics, Bruce's place in the Justice League. And Bruce may keep an encrypted drive full of plans for how to neutralize a mind-controlled or brainwashed Superman, but he understands the value of Clark's abilities, can't argue that it has ever been overstated.

Yes, Bruce was suspicious when Clark rose from the dead without a scratch on him. Sure, Clark didn't exactly think fondly of a man he hazily remembered setting traps for him with lasers, explosives, projectiles. But there are worse things out there than Lex Luthor, worse things than a re-embodied General Zod, and Clark and Bruce both understand that. They're perfectly capable of working together, and even being civil while they do it.

But they fuck like they hate each other.

 

 

Clark hardly leaves bruises, never breaks anything. (Well, except furniture, sometimes. But never any part of Bruce.) And Bruce never makes it so he can't—never pulls out the last couple kryptonite shells he's got locked up behind lead.

And it isn't—they fuck angrily, a little roughly, but people who love each other do that sometimes, too. It's not about the pace they set or the grip they use.

It's about how they don't look at each other. They don't touch each other longer than they have to. Clark digs his fingers into the backs of Bruce's thighs to hold him up, or wraps a hand around the back of Bruce's neck to keep him driving in at the right angle—and then they're done, and he lets go. Bruce hooks his legs over Clark's shoulders because that's the best place to put them at the time; he grips Clark's wrists so Clark knows to hold them still; that's all.

They don't look at each other, they don't touch each other longer than they have to, and they definitely don't talk about it.

And if they wanted to do it differently, they would.

 

 

(Clark tries once. He keeps the pace hard, the way he's pretty sure Bruce likes it, but not quite so fast, a little less utilitarian. He puts his hand over Bruce's fingers where they're wrapped around the edge of the headboard—not to pry them off, not to move Bruce's hand anywhere. Just because he wants to put it there.

Nothing about Bruce changes. Bruce doesn't look at him, doesn't make a sound. He doesn't even ask Clark what the hell he thinks he's doing. It's weird to think Bruce didn't notice—it's _Bruce_ —but maybe he didn't. Maybe he was distracted, or tired. Maybe—

Maybe he just doesn't pay that much attention to what Clark does.

If he did notice, he'd hate it anyway. So Clark doesn't try again.)

 

 

(Bruce doesn't try at all.

Wanting things where people can see you tells them where you're vulnerable. It's already heinously, unacceptably obvious of him to sleep with Clark—to sleep with _Superman_ , to let someone who could kill him in a single moment of distraction wrap themselves around his unarmored body and touch him wherever they like. That error has already been made, irrevocably so, but at the very least he will not allow himself to compound it.

It's a good thing that Clark is so widely considered astoundingly handsome, that there are so many things only Clark is physically capable of. There are acceptable explanations for Bruce's persistent inability to not fuck him every time the opportunity arises.

Bruce does this the only reasonable way there is to do this. And Clark—

Clark is Superman; Clark can only be coerced into action under extremely specific circumstances.

If Clark wanted to do it differently, he would.)

 

 

*

 

 

Bruce is the one who makes the first mistake.

 

 

Putting Lex Luthor behind bars doesn't do anything to stop anybody else from collecting kryptonite—and the stuff is like a goddamn villains' crackerjack prize. Never mind that the League collected every detectable trace from the ocean years ago, with Arthur's help; more keeps showing up anyway, new colors and new effects, new assaults Superman can't defend himself against.

When they find Clark this time, he's surrounded by a veritable rainbow of it: good old green to weaken him so he lacks the strength to get away from the red, the purple, the blue, the silver. Together it all gleams uncomfortably brightly, and with that much around him, Clark is turned into a ghastly mirror—the glow of the rocks is matched by his skin, intersecting cracks made of light spiderwebbing up his arms and across his face, green and red and purple and blue—

Barry darts past Bruce's shoulder; there's a brief rush of breeze, and then all the kryptonite is gone and it's just Clark, lying in a cage, shaking, the blazing marks the kryptonite scored into him slowly starting to recede.

Very, very slowly. He left the Watchtower almost two days ago; they realized there was something wrong eighteen hours ago. He's been exposed for at least twenty-four hours straight.

Diana and Victor are the likeliest to be able to lift him comfortably when he's this weak. Bruce gets out of their way, and makes a note to invest some research time into learning who exactly owns this building.

 

 

And that's why it happens. The kryptonite. Or, more accurately: the kryptonite plus Clark being an idiot.

It's true that they've been consistent. They've been sleeping together for years, at this point, and the League has maintained the same basic shift schedule at the Watchtower nearly all of that time—when there's no current crisis, their off-duty hours overlap just so. They've fucked during that window like clockwork, nearly every time they've had the chance.

But Clark was led into a trap, abducted, depowered and tortured. Bruce isn't expecting the knock on his door at all.

(Perhaps that's the real mistake. If he'd been prepared, he wouldn't have let it get as far. He'd have turned Clark away to start with.)

Objectively, Clark looks all right when Bruce opens the door. His hands, his face, are no longer mazed with cracks like breaking glass; there's none of that sickly too-pale light seeping out of his bones.

Subjectively—

Subjectively, it's a relief.

(If Bruce can't assess his own weaknesses accurately, he can't form contingency plans that account for them. He can—must—conceal them from everyone else; but, by the same token, he doesn't lie to himself.)

Subjectively, he hadn't been pleased by the thought that he wouldn't see Clark today—he had seen the results of Clark's medical scans, had been well aware Clark would be all right, and had remained obscurely unsatisfied by the knowledge.

The numbers displaying on the screens outside the medical bay should have helped more than the moment Bruce's hands touch Clark's chest. But Bruce doesn't lie to himself.

And that alone should have been enough of a red flag to stop him; but he takes Clark's shirt off anyway.

 

 

The mistake was made when Bruce opened the door. It's made when the shirt comes off. When they hit the bed; when Bruce slicks himself up, more hurried than thorough; when he parts his thighs and lowers himself down.

(The mistake's been made for years.)

Clark regularly does things for Bruce that no one else can do. Fucks him up against walls through three rounds, four, effortlessly—fucks himself on Bruce's dick for so long any human's thighs would give out—or, like today, presses up into Bruce from underneath, bearing his own weight and Bruce's, lifting both of them with each thrust.

His hands are a little tight on Bruce's hips; but Clark knows the limits. Clark doesn't make mistakes. Bruce keeps his gaze trained to the middle distance, somewhere over Clark's flexing shoulder, and doesn't say anything.

(They don't talk about it.)

And then—

Then Clark makes a small sound, barely a noise at all, and under Bruce's bracing hand, his arm shakes.

 

 

*

 

 

Clark is pretty sure Bruce prefers it hard. But hard's never been so _difficult_.

Part of him wonders vaguely whether this is what sex is always like for Bruce; whether when they do this three, four times in a row, Bruce feels this weird trembling— _exhaustion_. Is that what this is? Is that what that word means?

The rest of him is concentrating. It's been hours since the kryptonite—and he's never been exposed that long before, not to that many different kinds at once, but surely he should be almost through it. The hallucinations from the silver have stopped, and the nausea and pain from the green, the sense of dissociation that comes along with the loss of judgment to the red.

All right, so the strength hasn't come back all the way after the blue. But even if he's only partly recovered, he can still hold Bruce up the way Bruce likes. He's fine. It won't be a problem. He doesn't—he doesn't _want_ it to be a problem.

(He thought about not coming. Bruce would never have said anything. But he was alone for a long time, in pain for a long time—as much pain as Superman can be in, at least, though Clark's got no way to be sure how that stacks up against pain the way humans feel it. And he left the medical bay and walked into his empty Watchtower suite, and then he walked right back out again because he wanted—he wanted—)

"Stop."

Clark blinks and stops moving. In all the time they've done this, they've never talked during. They've never said so much as a word to each other. But now Bruce is breaking the rules, two of them at once: because Bruce is looking Clark in the face, eyes dark but clear, brow drawn tight, and Bruce is saying—

"You idiot."

Clark stares at him. Is the strength coming back quicker than he'd thought? Did he—

"Let go," Bruce adds, and Clark does it instantly, gut sinking; but there aren't any marks on Bruce's hips after Clark lifts his hands away. It must be something else. He realizes after a moment that he's still staring at Bruce, but he can't quite make himself stop. (He gets to look at Bruce's face all the time, every day—why, when Bruce is naked in front of him, is that still what he wants most to see?)

Superman is brave—but Clark isn't, not always. He finds he doesn't want to ask what he's done wrong. He doesn't want to know what the answer is, what did it this time of all times. He just—he was alone in that cage for so long, and this mess with Bruce is in some ways the closest Clark gets to anyone, for all the distance he and Bruce have so carefully built into it.

(He wants to touch someone and be touched, be— _held_ , even. And Clark's not stupid, Bruce won't do that, but Clark still doesn't want to go to anybody else for it—)

But he can't say that.

Except Bruce is still looking at him. And Bruce hasn't moved away. Bruce has, Clark knows, been captured before—kidnapped, tortured.

Maybe Clark doesn't need to say it.

 

 

Bruce eases off him, doesn't wince even though it must be uncomfortable; the interruption wasn't enough to soften Clark at all. And then he shoves Clark onto his back, wraps a hand around Clark's dick, and—and grips his shoulder with the other, right where it starts to curve into Clark's neck, the side of Bruce's thumb against Clark's throat.

Steadying himself, that's all, since he's leaning over Clark now. But Bruce's hand is warm, strong, solid. And Clark is so tired.

It doesn't take long. Clark comes too fast, sooner than he wants to—and that means it's over, he thinks blurrily, so he needs to get up. He needs to leave. But he doesn't and Bruce doesn't make him; and when he wakes up three hours later, he's still in Bruce's room, even if Bruce isn't.

 

 

*

 

 

Clark is the one who makes the second mistake.

 

 

It's not that he's decided to try to do anything differently. "Try" implies that he intended to, that there was some kind of forethought and effort involved. And that's not what happens.

Because it doesn't count as forethought that he spends so much time thinking about how it went last time. And it doesn't count as effort that he twists things around in his head, so far that it starts to look to him like maybe Bruce was—was careful with him.

Which should be ridiculous. Clark had still been a little kryptonite-sick, granted, but at the end of the day he'd also still been Superman: still invulnerable, still unbreakable. He'd been all right, all right and steadily getting better. Unless there'd been another chunk of kryptonite hidden under the bed or something, Bruce hadn't needed to worry about making things easier for him. Bruce hadn't needed to—take care of him like that. And Bruce doesn't do unnecessary things.

Clark can't make sense of it, and it nags at him. He lingers on it. And the next time—

 

 

The truth is, it's the easiest thing in the world; the truth is, Clark doesn't think at all. Bruce is pounding into him steadily, exactly the way he likes, and it feels so, so good—it's like Bruce is taking care of him again, almost, putting time and effort into making him feel like this. It would have been harder to stop himself than it is to hook an arm around Bruce's neck, to tug him down until Clark can press a temple against his jaw and _groan_.

(They don't touch each other longer than they have to. And they don't make noise.)

And it should be a disaster; but Clark doesn't even have time to regret it.

The tail end of the groan is still shuddering through Clark's chest when Bruce—systematic, methodical, efficient Bruce—falters, stutters his hips; is only half-out before he shoves back in, sudden and off-balance and too fast. His heart sounds the same way it always does when they do this, low and quick with exertion, but his breath—Clark hears it catch, can't not, and he's never heard that sound before.

(It sounds like surprise. Bruce is never surprised by anything.)

The abbreviated thrust makes Clark curl up into Bruce that much harder, makes his arm tighten where it presses against the side of Bruce's throat. Bruce swallows, Clark can feel it, and then—

Then he slides one long strong hand under Clark, and settles it flat across the span of Clark's back. Not to hold Clark up, not to steady him, or if it is it's unnecessary—and Bruce doesn't do unnecessary things—so maybe it's just because—just because—

Clark comes in a wash of red light behind his eyelids, squeezing them shut tight so he can't accidentally fry a hole in the ceiling; and he clutches at Bruce with both hands, thighs tight around Bruce's waist; and Bruce fucks into him sharply one more time and makes a low rough sound—a _sound_ —into Clark's ear.

And that's when Clark knows it wasn't a mistake at all.

 

 

Bruce makes himself let go, pulls out and rolls away. His heart is pounding, but that doesn't mean anything; that always happens when they do this. Listening to that won't tell Clark anything he shouldn't know.

He needs to get up. Stand up, walk away, clean himself off, wash the sweat and the come and Clark away until it might as well never have happened. He needs to get up; but somehow all momentum is lost before he reaches the edge of the bed. He should keep going—has kept going every other time, and there's nothing stopping him.

But for one unthinkable, inexplicable moment, he doesn't, and that's all it takes.

That pause can't be undone. Not even if he gets up now; not even if he makes Clark leave, if he walks right out of the Watchtower and never lays eyes on Clark again. He could have left the bed and didn't—chose not to—and that feels like as loud an action as shouting in Clark's face.

He stays where he is. Every second he keeps doing it is another mistake, and he lies there, eyes shut, and counts them as they pile up.

Clark isn't sick this time. Clark will go. He won't be cruel about it: Clark is kind to animals, strangers, people he doesn't like, all the time. (It's irrational to think of Superman's constant, relentless generosity as a step down from the anger Clark's sometimes shown Bruce. And Bruce doesn't indulge in irrationality.) He'll go; and whether he decides to come back again, whether he'll open his door the next time Bruce knocks, can't matter. Bruce can't allow it to.

The mattress shifts. The motion of it fills Bruce with a grim kind of satisfaction, the resigned feeling of being proved right about truths that are ugly.

But it isn't followed by the shushing sound of Clark dressing, or the sound of the door. Even with his eyes closed, Bruce can follow the soft pat of Clark's steps across bare wood—and then the change in surface to tile, water running, the wet thwack of a used washcloth being tossed back down onto the rim of the tub. And then—

Then Clark comes back and lies down again, close enough to touch; and Bruce breathes in and opens his eyes, and lets himself think that maybe some mistakes are worth making.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> EPILOGUE: And then they kept banging just as much as they always had, but sometimes also _touched just because they wanted to_ and _looked each other in the eye now and then_ and also maybe even KISSED, and other recklessly self-indulgent things like that. GOOD JOB, GUYS. GOLD STARS ALL AROUND.


End file.
